solaris x86 versus linux on the same hardware - Solaris

This is a discussion on solaris x86 versus linux on the same hardware - Solaris ; KarlD schrieb:
> Also keep in mind that US-II's are fully 64-bit processors
> whereas Pentium's at that time were 32-bit processors,
Right...
> which means that US can shuffle and process twice
> as much data per cycle.
Well, ...

Re: solaris x86 versus linux on the same hardware

KarlD schrieb:
> Also keep in mind that US-II's are fully 64-bit processors
> whereas Pentium's at that time were 32-bit processors,

Right...
> which means that US can shuffle and process twice
> as much data per cycle.

Well, that depends on the task...
> Most comparisons are for 32-bit
> applications where this advantage does not come into play.
> As soon as you need to address more than 2G, which we
> needed to do frequently in many simulations, you were
> pretty much dead with any Intel/Linux systems.

Right. But for most desktop systems that simply wasn't a problem. Not at
the time the USII was current, and even not today...

Benjamin

Re: solaris x86 versus linux on the same hardware

Benjamin Gawert wrote:
> Thommy M. schrieb:
>
>>>SPARC was never known for very high performance. The 500MHz UltraSPARC
>>>II is around as fast as a P3 500/550MHz. Of course your Dell runs
>>>circles around it not only because it has a much faster cpu but also
>>>because it has much better I/O performance (i.e memory)...
>>
>>
>> Benjamin, can you show us some figures supporting that?
>
> Sure, for example the figures on www.spec.org...
>
>> I belive a
>> reasonably new
>> SPARC can compete with a x86 in some cases.
>
> Well, a 500MHz UltraSPARC is hardly "reasonably new". In 2002 I got a
> new Blade 1000 with two 900MHZ USIII processors. I was a bit
> disappointed that my cheap Dell P4 1.5GHz ran circles around the Sun in
> terms of fp performance. Especially when my Dell was around 1200EUR
> (with 15" TFT) while the Bladed 1000 was over 20kEUR...
>
>> Regarding memory I think
>> that's somewhere where the SPARC based systems really is better.
>
> Nope. The 500MHz USII uses slow EDORAM, and even the more modern 550MHz
> USIIe with standard SDRAM is way behind every standard PC today which
> uses fast DDR- or DDR2-SDRAM in dual channel configuration...
>
>> Also
>> disk I/O is mostly
>> an order of magnitude better as they run SCSI (or SAS) disks.
>
> Well, for destop use SCSI isn't really faster (just magnitudes more
> expensive). That's why most high end desktop workstations today come
> with fast SATA drives...

No, they use IDE/sata because they're cheaper than SCSI. It's really that simple.
>
> Of course it's different with huge servers that have multiple PCI-X
> busses and multiple processors. But even there Opteron and also Itanium
> simply kick asses. And Sun probably already is aware of that, look at
> the work they put in their Opteron products...
>
> Of course this all is quite technical. In the end it simply depends on
> the application and how it's optimized for a certain platform...
>
> Benjamin